Don Newman

September 2, 2021

We can’t afford any of it, or any of them. Halfway through this election campaign we have now seen the platforms of the major parties. One thing is clear about all of them. Amid the record deficits incurred by the management of the COVID crisis, Canada can’t afford all of the promises that either the Liberals, Conservatives or NDP are making. And the measures the parties are proposing to pay for these cornucopias of goodies are destined to fall far short of what is being anticipated.

Maybe having to deal with the huge amounts of money needed for the variety of programs from the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), through business rent subsidies, to payments for seniors that kept the country afloat through the worst of the pandemic, has blinded politicians to the number of zeros attached to each spending proposal.

What other explanation could there be for the party platforms that have been presented? Each has billions of dollars committed to any number of different promises. There is nothing wrong with the promises. On their own each and every one of them is probably commendable. In the aggregate, however, the costs seem astronomical. And unlike the programs instituted because of COVID-19 which have an expiration deadline, most of the promises in all of the party platforms are to be established in perpetuity.

The Liberal Party platform released Wednesday is the only one that has been costed, in this case at $78 billion. The Conservative and NDP platforms are still being crunched by the non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Officer and his staff. You can only suppose the numbers are so big it is taking extra time to calculate them.

In addition to the spending promises, a wise person looks for the way each of the parties plans to pay for what it is offering. The Liberals are promising to boost revenue by raising taxes on big banks and insurance companies, neither of which has suffered during the pandemic. It’s something that has some chance of working. Banks and insurance companies can increase their business activities outside of Canada to reduce their tax burden somewhat, but they can’t up and move somewhere else.

Not so for individuals. The New Democrats plan to finance their costly promises — including a universal pharmacare plan — by raising taxes on the “ultra-rich” in Canadian society, whom the party says are using loopholes to pay almost no taxes. Whether that is a good idea or not, people targeted by that plan have a lot of mobility. Since the NDP has no realistic chance of winning the election, the possibility of the “ultra rich tax” is remote, as is universal pharmacare.

The Conservatives have the most optimistic idea for paying for their platform. They say they can do everything they promise, plus balance the budget within ten years. The Parliamentary Budget Office says after all the COVID-19 spending it could take up to 70 years to balance the budget. Not to be deterred, the Conservatives say they can accomplish everything without program cuts. The secret? Growing the economy; because nobody’s ever thought of that. A high rate of economic growth would certainly help any government’s finances. But the rates of growth it would take to balance the budget and make good on Conservative platform promises would require GDP growth in Canada to rival the economic growth that reflected China’s transition from developing country to  upper-middle-income country. Even China isn’t achieving those growth rates now.

Party platforms are wish lists and statements of good intentions. Many of the most expensive are unlikely to see the light of day for a long time — if ever.

Contributing writer and columnist Don Newman, a Life Member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, is author of the bestselling memoir, Welcome to the Broadcast and Executive Vice President of Rubicon Strategies in Ottawa. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada.